Broken
Emerging from the darkest days of a panic disorder, I found that my brain did not work the way it used to, and my sense of self had been changed.
Before panic, I had not known that at the center of me there was a core. I had not felt this core when it was whole, just like I couldn’t feel my kidneys or my spleen (although I was fairly sure they were there).
But peering inward, I could feel it at my very center – my self, my nucleus, a hardened concentration of my being, like a smooth, round, grey, river rock. And there, through its middle, I could see a break – a long jagged crack staring back at me.
Though previously, I had been unaware of the existence of this core, now that it was broken, it seemed the only thing I could feel. Every time I moved, I could feel the rough edges of the broken halves grating together.
I could not get back the feeling of wholeness I had known before. I felt broken, like a cracked teacup, that, every time you set down upon its saucer makes a slight discordant clink.
That sounds small, I know. No big deal, right? But it is not small. It is everything!
Outwardly, my body was perfect. Unmarked. But it was a lie. It was a lie right down to my manicured fingernails.
Like the lie I saw looking back at me in the mirror when I had a migraine. One eye, the one that was throbbing and pulsing with pain, should have been black and bruised or red or swollen, but it wasn’t. Except perhaps for a weariness in my expression, my face looked normal. What I saw was not at all what was. But then, a migraine was mostly just pain and nausea, and it goes away after a time. This new broken-ness was much worse, much more uncomfortable.
And worst of all, it didn’t go away.
I was scared. What if it could not be fixed? What if I had been irrevocably broken? I didn’t want to feel that way forever. I didn’t think I could stand it.
Like a toothache, the discomfort of this broken feeling was with me constantly. I couldn’t ignore it. And I became completely absorbed by the need to hold the broken pieces of myself together. I wondered what person had written “Humpty Dumpty,” and whether they had known panic? It seemed to mirror exactly how I felt.
In my next session with my psychiatrist, Dr. FOBB (the extraordinary Fixer Of Broken Brains), I told her, basically, that I was broken, thinking she wouldn’t understand, forgetting that she always did.
“It’s like there’s this center part of me that I didn’t even know was there, because I never felt it before, and now it’s broken,” I said.
I saw this part of myself in my mind’s eye – the round cracked stone. The image of it in my head was so clear. My throat tightened a little with tears, but with an iron first I held them back, crushed them.
I was so afraid of her answer (and I hated how melodramatic I sounded), but I asked anyway, “Am I going to feel whole again? Unbroken?” I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to see her expression, and I didn’t want her to see how important her answer was to me.
“Yes, you will,” she said, with total absolute confidence.
Enormous relief swept through me, and almost, I believed her. Almost.
She looked serious, and she spoke slowly. “What we are doing right now, with the medicine,” she said, “is putting a rubber band around the break. But what we’re going to do over time is cement over the crack so that the broken place becomes even stronger than it was before it broke.”
I could see this in my mind – the rubber band holding the pieces of me together. And I could see the concrete – smooth and strong, sealing the broken stone together permanently. I felt enormous relief. That was what I wanted. I wanted to mend the break with concrete, pave right over it so that it was smooth and clean. I wanted to be able to forget it was ever there. I would work for this. I would work very hard.
Today (many years later), I can say, honestly, that I am whole again. It is possible to mend – completely. I am not the same as I was before. I am changed. I am a different whole with a beautiful scar.
And my journey through panic is now a vital part of who I am. Like a single strand of yarn in a blanket, it has been woven into my fabric. And it has made me stronger. So much stronger. And wiser. So much wiser.
Check out my article, What A Panic Attack Feels Like
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